Superfast Berkshire has signed contracts with Gigaclear and Call Flow Solutions (CFS) to expand superfast broadband in the Berkshire districts of West Berkshire and Windsor & Maidenhead.
Gigaclear will deploy ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) technology to more than 11,700 premises across West Berkshire, enabling these homes and businesses to access broadband speeds of 50Mbps and up to 1000Mbps.
Superfast coverage is now set to rise from around 65% delivered under the commercial roll out of the private sector to in excess of 99% once Superfast
Berkshire’s contracted delivery is completed. Phase 1 of the project is expected to be completed by BT in September 2015 (taking initial coverage to 83%) and will now be followed by further expansion under Phase 2 into the most difficult to reach areas by Gigaclear.
This contract is set to fill in virtually all gaps in the remaining intervention area across most of the rural parts of the county bringing high speed broadband to the areas that missed out under Phase 1.
The combination of funding from Broadband Delivery UK, West Berkshire District Council, and Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership of around £3.7m and the contribution of £16m from Gigaclear will provide a total investment fund of almost £20m.
After an initial period of planning, Gigaclear expects to begin work on the construction of the new infrastructure in November 2015, with the first customers expected to gain access to new broadband services before the end of the year. The deployment is expected to be completed by the middle of 2017.
Call Flow Solutions will provide a Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) solution to eleven new cabinets in Windsor & Maidenhead, expanding superfast broadband with speeds above 30 Mbps to in excess of 1,750 additional premises (residential and business).
This contract is targeting upgrades principally on the Windsor and Wraysbury exchange but is also expecting to address areas around Burchett’s Green and Horton. This will increase superfast coverage by a further 2.7% but due to a reduction in the originally planned commercial coverage by the private sector, RBWM is expected to stand at around 92.7% superfast coverage.
The combination of funding from Broadband Delivery UK, The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead, and Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership of £415,000 is being supported with a contribution of £120,000 from Call Flow Solutions. Planning will start in July and delivery is expected to be completed by mid-2016.
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